I've got pie but I'm not a pion

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They paved paradise yada yada yada
It was previously thought that the most futile thing in the universe was listing songs one would use in the sound track for an imaginary film. Well, I have thought of something even more futile - listing songs that one would use in the sound track for an imaginary film BUT with lyric changes that the rights holder would be unlikely to agree to.
I bring you the song to accompany the scene where the heroine's partner runs off with a furry...
'Late one night I heard the screen door slam.
And a big yellow hamster took away my old man.'

James Cameron has offered to help with the special effects.

Safe words are the new hello Glastonbury
Two people from different not particularly overlapping groups have, within the last 3 days have, in the context of some slightly weird phrase, said 'and that's what we use as a safe word' or something on those lines. Is this a comedy thing, or coincidence, or is this a 'in spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to...' thing I wonder.

I expect other people have thought of this
But surely there must be potential for a game show with the title 'Pants Or No Pants'.

Looking at Facebook for Boring People
... as we like to call LinkedIn in these parts (having got an invite from an ex-colleague). I see an old colleague (from somewhere else) describes himself as 'Hands-on change leader'. To which I can only say 'get your hands off my change'.

Probably not as 'Mad Max' as it sounds
From a newsletter from our 2 Lib-Dem MEPS...
"Local MEP Catherine Bearder is continuing her fight against mega trucks.
Having fought against 30 tonne trucks with the Women's Institute in the 1980s, local MEP Catherine Bearder found herself fighting again when she attended a meeting of the No Mega Trucks campaign."

You can see it. The show down. The veteran of the Mega Truck Wars of the 80s coming out of retirement for one last fight. The flash-back to the WI's triumph.

'See' 'you' in the hive mind
Consider this, admittedly in the Scientific Sunday Sport. Money quote: "The work has culminated this week in the extraordinary announcement that these molecules in a marine alga may exploit quantum processes at room temperature to transfer energy without loss."
I cannot help seeing this as being the beginning of one of those SF stories that leads us, via a rogue scientist (TM), into assimilation into the hive mind by Tuesday morning.

My original title sounded rather bad
Links from polite and witty conversation over tea and cucumber sandwiches (actually tea and coffee and cake)...

Cookie Monster interviewed, includes reference to origin of 'om nom nom'
Om nom nom

Whoreswhoreshores... this was in reference to Whore^H^H^H^H^HDollhouse but the cartoon is actually about Frank Miller.

It is my own fault for not changing channel
The BBC are running a classic 'shape of Earth - opinions differ' story on climate change in heavy rotation on Press Releases 24.

15 books 'that will stay with you'
An old meme. The idea ISTR is that what the question means is slightly undefined and you shouldn't think about the list for too long.
So...

1. Alice In Wonderland / Through The Looking Glass
2. Sirens Of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut. I read this at an early age, as my brother had it. Probably affected me profoundly. Vonnegut is my elephant in the room, there in the background so obvious that he doesn't get mentioned.
3. A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M Miller. I read this at an early age, too. Early enough to not know what the word euthanasia meant :-)
4. To Vanishing Point - Doreen Norman. Blimey, took a while to find the author of this on-line, lots of books with that name! A children's SF book, got from a book-club at school. Basically, an alien ship crash-lands and the kids (one of the main characters looks like the alien girl), the kids manage to sort out a spare part and the alien takes off. In classic tradition, the alien offers to take the girl with her. It turns out, in a strange echo of the Vonnegut, that what the alien is doing is taking a poem between two worlds. I am wary of reading this again for fear that the demons of suck will have infested it, but it was very atmospheric and very good at getting across the unknowable-ness (unknowability?) of the alien.
5. Space Family Stone. Of all the juvenile Heinleins this was the one that I imagined myself being in in the space-ship by the side of my bed, possibly because the setting is more like our solar system than some of the others.
6. It's Like This, Cat - Emily Cheney Neville. See Wikipedia, and apparently this is public domain due to one of the weirdnesses of US copyright. This is, to me, the platonic ideal of the young adult novels of my youth. I have no idea where I came across it as it seems pretty much unknown in the UK. It is very sweet. I have reread this within the last few years and it is a fine book, though of course the world in which it is set is very much the world of its time, the early 60s.
7. Beyond Hawaii - Leonard Wibberley aka Patrick O'Connor. I rarely read non-SF books in the children's library, but I read this because the author wrote 2 SF novels. A family sails from the West Coast of California to (and, beyond, hence the title) Hawaii. Also very old fashioned, all the adults are Mr or Mrs So-And-So. I went sailing once and absolutely hated it, but still goes on the list!
8. Illuminatus / 9 Cosmic Trigger (Robert Anton Wilson's autobiography). My brother had 2 of the 3 books in the Illuminatus trilogy and Cosmic Trigger, as he had bought the wrong book by mistake. But bizarrely I found the 3rd book in a damaged books bin in a local bookshop. Illuminatus hasn't aged particularly well, I have to say, though.
10. The Alchemists - Margaret Doody. Have mentioned this before. This is a book that I saw mentioned somewhere and took a while to find, in the days before Abebooks. I think I found it in Banbury library when we lived there. Written in the early 80s and set in the early 60s, this is the closest to 'our' Oxford novel to my mind. The main protagonist is an American student who gets mistaken for someone from a richer family that the jeunesse dorée (the alchemists of the title) want to bring into their circle of friends to exploit. For me it captures the feeling of a 'normal' student at Oxford amid the rich, the beautiful, the outrageous etc. The alchemists have a number of scams going, which unravel at the end of the novel in a poetic fashion. The sexual attitudes of the time in which it is set, which are no doubt realistic, make one feel glad one was a student later. Bizarrely it appears to be in print in Italian. I wouldn't quite go as far as to say it is a great lost masterpiece, some of the scams don't quite make sense (spoiler really to say in what way), but I don't understand why it isn't in print and in the Oxford books sections in Blackwells etc.
11. The Whole Earth Catalog. Before there was the Internet, there was the Whole Earth Catalog. Like Dr. Whos you always prefer your first, and my first was, I think, the Essential Whole Earth Catalog
12. The World Radio And TV Handbook. Again, before the Internet, there was shortwave radio and impossibly exotic lists of radio stations all round the world.

Somehow after the top 12 things get a bit harder, but a semi-arbitrary 3 to round things off...

13. Something about SF... Hmm.... tricky. I want to say The SF Encyclopedia (1978 edition) which defined so many OUSFG discussion meetings, but it doesn't make the list in the same way as the other reference works in the list above, so I think I will say 'Engines of the Night' by Barry Malzberg, the one true history of SF.
14. Imperial Earth by the late great Arthur. I want to describe this as 'Space Family Stone but with polyamorous bisexuals instead of flat cats'. So I will. Another sensawunda tour of the solar system (*). Was it Michael Moorcock who said of Arthur that his world view had no room for the 4 horseman of the apocalypse trampling his rhododendrons? Yes it was
15. You'll Never Be Here Again by Mark Blackaby (and we are getting into the realms of the arbitrary here but it was what leapt to mind). Another Oxford novel, the author wrote two novels then vanished without a trace. Very much a first novel in the picaresque adventure with bolt on thriller plot mould (see also Fry, Stephen, novel, first). The main flaw to my mind is that the school-and-university-til-she-dumps him girlfriend and the picks-him-up-between-finishing-university-and-starting-job girlfriends being a little too much of the wishful thinking fantasy type. Won the Betty Trask prize. Whatever happened to him I wonder?

(*) 'oooh it's a sensa-wunda' to the tune of Stairway To Heaven

Can you believe they wiped this?
On

j4's LJ, I used the phase 'whom God preserve,of Utrecht' in connection with Mr Snips (whom God preserve, of Utrecht). This prompted a comment by

venta, which prompted me to look up the phrase on Wikipedia which yielded http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_of_Beachcomber (which I did not know, though there was a Radio 4 thing with Richard Ingrams which I think I have a cassette of somewhere, possibly) and in particular "Odd inventions explained by Dr. Strabismus (whom God preserve) of Utrecht (Spike Milligan with a high quavering German accent)."

Snakes of Hawaii, zoos of Oxford
Grant was apparently memorable at Oxford: actress Anna Chancellor has recalled, "I first met Hugh at a party at Oxford Zoo. There was something magical about him. He was a star even then, without having done anything."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Grant

Icing the body electric
It occurs to me to say, should anyone care, that Jaron Lanier appears to be in the country, doing various things in London and Cambridge (dunno if the one in Cambridge is public) http://www.jaronlanier.com/

Reasons to be snitful parts 1 2 3^H^H^H ^H 94
1. I have some sort of cold. Minor sniffles and cough, though that may be more due to the weather, and tired, though that may be due to the 3 trips to London in the last week or so, but mainly the strange feeling of having had someone sandpaper the inside of my wind-pipe.
2. Where did all the peanut butter go? (long time passing, where did all the peanut butter go, long time ago?)
3. A trip to the Oracle centre in Reading. Over the last 6 months or so since we last went there it has started to look shabby.
4. One of the Waterstones' in Reading has the definite Stench Of Death (TM). The other one, in the converted chapel looks about as live as ever, i.e. not very, but no worse than usual. (*)
5. Unreasonably irked to find that the commercial radio station in Reading / Basingstoke, like Fox FM has also been rebranded as Heart.
6. Irksome Conservative profauxsal about high speed broadband being wibbled about on the BBC Irksome Wibbling About Profauxsals Channel (formerly BBC Press Releases 24).
7. The Macmillan vs Amazon vs Apple vs Google vs Microsoft (with a side-order of Apple vs Adobe) 'Oceania is at war with Eastasia, Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia' all-comers pissing context. A plaque (blue) on all their houses.
7a. Had a brief play with a Sony e-book reader. Not impressed. Also, I am not psychologically prepared for the advent of e-books. (***)
8. Sony and Nintendo both advertising the iPlayer as part of their ads for Wii, Playstation 3. This is snitful in the sense that it is a racing certainty that the BBC will be kneecapped by Call Me Dave on irksome tribal grounds and in order to treacherously cow-tow to News Corporation.
9. I am simultaneously irked by
(a) the revelations of dubious goings on in the world of 'Climate OMFGWAGTFDBBQ' science
(b) the reaction from both sides (crowing / exaggeration/ minimising / lame excuses)
A carbon-neutral plaque (also blue) on all their houses too.
10. Rereading one of my books about Enron in the bath this morning did little to improve my mood (other books being read currently being too large / expensive to read in the bath or library books). The resonances will have to go unremarked in an unlocked post and are left as an exercise to the reader, though a lot of it seems to be straining at a gnat and swallowing the camel of valuing all sorts of revenue streams by mark to market accounting (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron_scandal#Mark-to-market_accounting )

In weird rather than snitful news, Waterstones are hyping Jaron Lanier's book in their top ten books we are hyping this week (or whatever). Jaron appears to be going on about that which Jaron goes on about, and no doubt I will buy / read it at some point, but it strikes me that this is awfully obscure for a mainstream book, the equivalent of a book by someone from one Plymouth Brethren sect arguing about their arguments versus another.

(*) Strange anthropological / business notes
i - the one in the Oracle centre has ads for e-books all over the place, the other one not (though it is selling Sony and Elonex (**) e-book readers.
ii - the one in the Oracle centre has one bookcase of sex books, the other one two bookcases of pregancy / childbirth books. Go figure.
(**) Good grief, Elonex are still going.
(***) Am also planning to get an 8-track cartridge player.

Two incest plots in a week on ITV3
Is it 'incest week, sponsored by Visit Yorkshire'?

On a brighter note..
.. a bit of lateral thinking has lead me to the name of the special school in Hammersmith that my late sister-in-law used to teach at about 30 years ago. My nephew has now moved to beautiful Hammersmith and at some point we will have to have an expedition to hunt down the school, which was called Elizabeth Burgwin after a pioneer of special education. In the way of things, I can't quite marry up the geography of the area as seen on Google Maps with my recollections, the roads seem to be at a 90 degrees angle from what I was expecting.
The school certainly no longer exists, I infer from some of the Googling that it moved / was combined / was renamed.

Remembrance of Jazz-Funk Past.
You may recall me mentioning that whilst we were eating in Marguta, probably the finest vegetarian restaurant in the world, I heard a track I had on a tape of random things recorded off the radio many years ago. I asked what the CD was but the waiter said it was a satellite radio channel. Some looking for likely suspects, Spyro Gyra and Earl Klugh failed to find it; neither seemed quite right really.
A couple of days ago I found a cassette of the type it would have been on - A BASF C60 with a red label - and put it in the old radio cassette player. It proved to be the right tape. As suggested by

cleanskies I tried Shazam and it texted me that it was 'Spring High' by Ramsey Lewis. In the way of things a video of a picture of the album cover along with a recording can be found on YouTube here. My cassette recording of it starts at about 17 seconds in which is, I think, interesting as I don't think the first 17 seconds are particularly good. Whether I didn't record them because of this, or whether I don't like the beginning because I was used to hearing it without I am not sure. Of course, the journey is more exciting than the destination, but it is nice to know what it is. I have to say that some random YouTubing does not really encourage me to go out and find more of his work.

Also on the tape was Running Man by Al Stewart (YouTube here). This was recorded off a land-based pirate, with a certain amount of FM hiss. At the end is a jingle from the station, something I don't remember at all called Parkside Radio, parodying one of the jingles of Thameside Radio. Ah, the late 70s / early 80s London Sunday land-based pirate, rather white and geeky, where I think I first came across Steely Dan and The Alan Parsons Project. London FM, Thameside Radio, The Intrepid Birdman, isn't it? Small boys, FM transmitters for goal posts.

The song itself is a song with an inconclusive narrative, the equivalent of the InterZone 'mood piece'. I think of it as being vaguely SF-nal but I suppose it isn't really. Listening to it on YouTube, I see that some of the treble heavy tonal quality (there is a word I want to use but it escapes me) I imputed to it being recorded off the pirate radio may be in the track itself, but it sounds wrong without the hiss.

I must have listened to that tape hundreds of times. As I've said before, it is hard to imagine anything sounding as new and exciting as things did then.

Lucky Starr
Ringo Starr on The Daily Show... I always feel that Ringo wakes up every day and thinks 'I am the most fortunate man alive. Never has anyone more been in the right place at the right time'. Which is nice.

Truly it is a brave new world
Phoned up a restaurant to make a booking (not trusting the on-line form) and before I had walked the three meters to my PC from the phone, an email confirmation had arrived. This perhaps shouldn't surprise me as much as it does.
In other news, the garage think they have found why the alternator belt tensioner has broken 3 times in the last 6 months. Which is nice.
Harvey managed to break off his dew claw again, more blood and squeaking than usual, but after a night with it bandaged up it looks no worse than they have done all the other times they have managed to do this, so we are keeping an eye on him and bathing it twice a day in salt water for now. Hmm, thought

t__m__i, there's blood on Nellie's foot and it doesn't seem to be hers.

Keyhole surgery on software
Have been working from home - I think two people (one amongst us here) made it into the office. Visual Studio is not really that usable any more on a 1024 by 768 screen in my experience, it is a bit like trying to perform keyhole surgery on the software, particularly as I was doing the sort of change that involved adding extra parameters to lots of things. Then again, maybe if the methods were shorter, but there would presumably just be more of them. Cue the nostalgia for using Brief on a 80 by 25 screen (with the edges take up with the 'edges of things' characters that used to be in the OEM character set).

If a weasel whinges in the forest does anyone hear it?
Experimented with a private post. Will the placebo effect of writing it and seeing it on my LJ page do any good, I wonder?